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In an increasingly interconnected world, transportation infrastructure has emerged as a critical determinant of economic growth and global competitiveness. High-speed rail (HSR), characterized by its exceptional speed and efficiency, has garnered widespread attention as a transformative mode of transportation that transcends borders and fosters economic development. The Kuala Lumpur – Singapore (KL-SG) HSR project stands as a prominent exemplar of this paradigm, symbolizing the potential of HSR to serve as a catalyst for national economic advancement.

This paper is prepared to provide an insight into the benefits and advantages of HSR based on proven case studies and references from global HSRs, including China, Spain, France and Japan.

The findings that have been obtained focus on enhanced connectivity and accessibility, attracting foreign direct investment, revitalizing regional economies, urban development and city regeneration, boosting tourism and cultural exchange, human capital development, regional integration and environmental and sustainability benefits.

The KL-SG HSR, linking Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, epitomizes the potential for HSR to be a transformative agent in the realm of economic development. This project encapsulates the aspirations of two dynamic Southeast Asian economies, united in their pursuit of sustainable growth, enhanced connectivity and global competitiveness. By scrutinizing the KL-SG High-Speed Rail through the lens of economic benchmarking, a deeper understanding emerges of how such projects can drive progress in areas such as cross-border trade, tourism, urban development and technological innovation.

The changing roles of the United Nations (UN) and national institutions have made addressing climate change a critical concern for many multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) survival and growth. This chapter discusses how such institutions, which vary in their nature and characteristics, shape firm strategies for climate change adaptation. Exploring different versions of institutional theory, the chapter demonstrates how and why institutional characteristics affect typical patterns of firm ownership, governance, and capabilities. These, in turn, influence companies’ internationalisation and climate-change strategies. Climate change poses challenges to how we understand firms’ strategic decisions from both an international business (IB) (HQ–subsidiary relations) and global value chains (GVC) (buyer–supplier relations) perspective. However, climate change also provides opportunities for companies to gain competitive advantages – if firms can reconfigure and adapt faster than their competitors. Existing IB and GVC research tends to downplay the importance of climate change strategies and the ways in which coherent or dysfunctional institutions affect firms’ reconfiguration and adaptation strategies in a globally dispersed network of value creation. This chapter presents a perspective on the institutional conditions that affect firms’ climate change strategies regarding ownership, location, and internalisation (OLI), and GVCs, with ‘investment’ and ‘emerging standards’ playing a significant role. The authors illustrate the discussion using several examples from the Global South (i.e. Bangladesh) and the Global North (i.e. Denmark, Sweden, and Germany) with a special emphasis on the garment industry. The aim is to encourage future research to examine how a ‘business systems’, or varieties of capitalism, institutional perspective can complement the analysis of sustainability and climate change strategies in IB and GVC studies.

This chapter aims to critically analyse the implications that the national protectionist policies have on the global supply and value chains and the relocation of production. The analysis is based on the assumptions that the global economy is facing the possibility of decoupling of many trade connections, and this trend favours de-globalisation processes that have long been promoted by populism, nationalism and economic protectionism. It is concluded that global supply, production and value chains although being economically efficient are no longer any more secure under national protectionist policies, and therefore, the relocation of production processes is mainly due to the increase in the level of income and wages of the developing countries that are the destination and which reduce the advantages to relocate.

This study aims to assess terrorism activities to identify measures required to mitigate the rise of terrorism activities and their metamorphosis into organised criminal activity through the prevention, disruption and dismantling of sources of financing terrorism.

A qualitative methodology was adopted for this study using descriptive synthesis from recent publications and reports of reputable organisations, i.e. relevant grey literature, key informant interview and a focus group discussion. This triangulation approach was used to cross-validate the findings.

The findings revealed that terrorism financing is most likely linked to organised crime for generating revenues and is further used to finance the activities of terrorists.

Terrorists operate from places with little or no presence of governance and, better still, ungovernable spaces for carrying out legitimate businesses, raising internally generated revenues from protection fees, ransoms and taxes. This space further allows domestic collaboration with local criminal gangs to exploit natural mineral resources. If the market for these resources is across borders, international or transnational criminal groups collaborate with terrorists to move the goods and assist with financial services for the generated proceeds.

This study assessed the emerging links between terrorism financing and organised crime in Nigeria.

Recent developments in the EU’s anti-corruption strategy have brought the EU closer to meeting the UNCAC’s objectives, i.e. the Proposal for a Directive on combating corruption (2023) and the Proposal for a Directive on Asset Recovery and Confiscation (2022). This paper aims to discuss these developments from the perspective of the UNCAC, to identify missing elements in the EU’s asset recovery mechanisms.

Critical approach towards EU anti-corruption policy (discussing the problems and solutions). Review of EU developments in asset recovery law.

There is a political will on the part of the EU to fight corruption through the rules enshrined in the UNCAC. However, improving EU law by introducing a new type of confiscation of unexplained wealth and criminalising illicit enrichment, without establishing convergent rules for the return of corrupt assets from EU territory to the countries of origin, cannot be seen as sufficient action to achieve the UNCAC’s objectives. In modelling mechanisms of the return of assets, the EU should search for solutions to overcome the difficulties resulting from the ordre public clause remaining a significant factor conditioning mutual legal assistance.

This paper discusses the possible input of the EU, as a non-State Party to the UNCAC, to advance implementing the UNCAC solutions on asset recovery by establishing convergent rules for the return of corrupt assets from EU territory to countries of origin.

Transnational migration has produced a state of flux in the naturalized conception of home as a fixed, bounded, discreet and trouble-free place of origin, (re)casting home as a more complex, or perhaps simpler, project entangled within the workings of the global capitalist economy. In this context, here the author qualitatively explores migrants’ engagement with the notion of home in the sense of how they conceptualize and experience home, based on the lived experiences of Sri Lankan women who have migrated to Kuwait as live-in migrant domestic workers (MDWs) independently of their families. The stories of the MDWs simultaneously made the meaning of home as conventionally defined, more straightforward and more complicated: home was taken on a journey with them to a faraway foreign land. The MDWs negotiated and constructed belonging and not belonging dialectically in multiple homes, thus being simultaneously “here,” “there” and “nowhere.” In migration, home thus manifests the evolution of female power and duty, portraying it at once as a locus of women’s liberation and as new and perhaps more extreme forms of (re)subjectivation in the emplacement of home within global capitalism. Migration performs home as a space in the (un)making: an ongoing project through the course of life.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on doctoral education. Pandemics throughout history have generated new educational theories and practices, accelerated some trends and signalled the abrupt end of others. The unpredictable effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have particularly impacted upon First Nations and transcultural communities and People of Colour throughout the globe. A second significant recent global trend that occurred at the height of the pandemic was the reignited #BlackLivesMatter (#BLM) protest campaign. This campaign drew attention to the vast inequities faced by black, transcultural (migrant, refugee, culturally diverse and international) and Indigenous peoples and triggered rapid action in higher education institutions against racism and unconscious bias.

This conceptual paper draws upon postcolonial/decolonial theory to demonstrate how the COVID pandemic and #BLM movement prompts us to revitalise doctoral education.

These two issues have created renewed urgency around the need to decolonise higher education and a desire to transform the “business-as-usual” geopolitical power dynamics that continue to privilege Northern knowledge over culturally diverse knowledge systems from First Nations and transcultural contexts. A key site where special opportunities exist to effect this transformation lies in doctoral education. Doctoral education is a significant location of new knowledge creation and the development of the world’s future researchers.

Applying post/decolonial theory enables one to rethink how doctoral education should be changed to work towards greater decolonisation.

This study applies Santos’ ideas about “the sociologies of emergence” in the global South to think about how doctoral education should be reconstructed as a liberated zone of decolonisation and epistemic justice.

This purpose of this paper is to report on the development of an evidence-informed framework created to facilitate the formulation of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) academic integrity policy responses for English medium instruction (EMI) higher education, responding to both the bespoke challenges for the sector and longstanding calls to define and disseminate quality implementation good practice.

A virtual nominal group technique engaged experts (n = 14) in idea generation, refinement and consensus building across asynchronous and synchronous stages. The resulting qualitative and quantitative data were analysed using thematic analysis and descriptive statistics, respectively.

The GenAI Academic Integrity Policy Development Blueprint for EMI Tertiary Education is not a definitive mandate but represents a roadmap of inquiry for reflective deliberation as institutions chart their own courses in this complex terrain.

If repeated with varying expert panellists, findings may vary to a certain extent; thus, further research with a wider range of stakeholders may be necessary for additional validation.

While grounded within the theoretical underpinnings of the field, the tool holds practical utility for stakeholders to develop bespoke policies and critically re-examine existing frameworks.

As texts produced by students using English as an additional language are at risk of being wrongly accused of GenAI-assisted plagiarism, owing to the limited efficacy of text classifiers such as Turnitin, the policy recommendations encapsulated in the blueprint aim to reduce potential bias and unfair treatment of students.

The novel blueprint represents a step towards bridging concerning gaps in policy responses worldwide and aims to spark discussion and further much-needed scholarly exploration to this end.

Through Bourdieusian sociology, this study aims to interpret a globalized symbolic environment ward by the States and dominated by organizations through the States’ Nobilities enticing and the Euro-American influences disseminated by the cultural circuit of capitalism in the inculcation and incorporation of a class habitus conniving with this logic of domination.

This study has developed a theoretical essay based on the contributions of Bourdieusian sociology to discuss and understand the following concepts and their respective relationships: symbolic environment, globalization, organizations, State, State Nobility, Euro-American influences, cultural circuit of capitalism and class habitus.

The arguments built throughout this theoretical essay recognized how class habitus on environment contributes to organizations establishing themselves as a space that consolidates and replicates the domination logic. As indicated, the State Nobility is an intermediary element between dominant organizations and the State, as dominated.

This theoretical essay signals that less harmful alliances between organizations, the State Nobility and the State could culminate in social, environmental and economic scenarios provided with more inclusion, diversity and preservation.

This study presents an in-depth conceptual analysis to hold power structures responsible as direct and indirect drivers of environmental problems, with their different proportions and severity levels, affecting the planet.

This study proposes an alternative lens to debate and question how much the results presented by the contemporary world order compensate (if in any way) the damage that invades and deteriorate environmental assets.